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The Dud
Critical annoyance with this sort of thing came to a head in 1994 with the big-budget, tiny-gross "The Hudsucker Proxy." Again, the Coens brought it on themselves:
"In a weird kind of way, 'Hudsucker' is almost an exception to the other movies we have made. It was almost calculated to prove what people thought about our previous movies... 'Hudsucker' truly is a comment on the genres it draws from."
The Coens are known for toying with the press, but the quote may be instructive. Most of the Coens' allusiveness seems to be innocent, in that the Coens simply like the movies and stories they draw from, and are not insecure about sacrificing some measure of originality in order to amuse themselves. That "The Big Lebowski," say, is lifted directly from Chandler is more a genial admission that there are no new stories than some cryptic comment on the state of the detective story in modern times. The Coens are structural thieves; whatever artistic ambitions they have are evidently satisfied by the addition of eye-catching sets, careening camera angles, and crisp, arch dialogue and performances (much of the Coens' dialogue is referential in itself, a constant tweaking of clichées and expressions to fit their bent sense of humor and character).
Most importantly, the referential nature of most of the brothers' films is tangential, and optional for the viewer — one may take the allusions or leave them; the soul of the film (yes, Virginia, the Coen brothers' movies do have souls, but more on that later) is untouched.
In "Hudsucker," however, an undisguised meeting of Frank Capra's little-guy-in-the-big-city films and the more cynical rapid-chatter comedies of Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges, the overt homage of Jennifer Jason Leigh's grating, overcooked Rosalind Russell impersonation is vital, and therefore impossible to brush aside.
Speaking much as the critics did, biographer Bergan wrote, "No matter how brilliant 'The Hudsucker Proxy' is technically and conceptually, the movie cannot help but suffer from being a too-self-conscious pastiche. The Coens have tried to butter their toast on both sides, and ended up with neither. Those who know their 1930s and 1940s screwball and/or fantasy comedies consider that Hawks, Capra and Sturges, to whom palpable allusions are made, did it better. Those for whom the references mean nothing, lose an essential component in the appreciation of the film. The Coens, therefore, lost their audience."
And suddenly it became possible to write the Coens off. After a string of small, meticulous films ranging from the adored ("Blood Simple") to the zany ("Raising Arizona") to the elusive ("Barton Fink"), they had committed the ultimate indie sin — gotten full of themselves and made a big, flashy, technically brilliant tribute film that nobody went to see.
The brothers had intended to crack the mainstream with "Hudsucker"; now they were ridiculed in both directions, not just for trying but for trying and failing.
So they went home.
The Hit
For critics, and for the brothers too, "Fargo" was the antidote to all the excesses of "Hudsucker," from the budget ($7 million) to the content. The titles for "Fargo" announced that the movie was based — rather carelessly, the brothers admit — on a true story, of a kidnapping gone awry in Minnesota in 1987.
Minnesota — that's where they were from! No more pretentious travelings to fantastic versions of '30s Buffalo, '40s Hollywood, or '50s New York City. No more imaginings of Texas or Arizona — at last, the precocious brothers were eating their humble pie and writing what they knew, and of course the fact that Minnesotans do not come off in the movie as particularly sentient people made for great review copy.
Most importantly, looming idyllic above the dark ant-farm antics of the hapless Jerry Lundegaard and his two hired accomplices, it had a heart. It had Marge.
MacDormand's performance as Marge Gunderson was vintage Coens — precise, seamless, and confident, and the perfect leavening for the blackly comic tone that pervaded the rest of the movie. But it was the character of Marge that lifted the movie to where critics and audiences could love it — optimistic, unrelentingly cheery but also wily, and best of all, human.
"Fargo" even had a happy ending: All the criminals met one unhappy fate or another, even Jerry's father-in-law, and Marge, after solving the case, hauling Peter Stormare into custody and duly clucking her tongue at the seamy greeds of the world, settles into bed with her placid husband and asks rhetorically, "We're doing pretty good, yah?"
By Coens standards, "Fargo" was a smash hit. The movie grossed nearly $25 million as women cooed over Marge, and took their husbands, who went home chuckling about Steve Buscemi and the silent guy, and the leg in the woodchipper. The film became the totem of that year's indie-film rush on the Academy, and the Coens took home two Oscars and the smell of Hollywood's perfume all over them.
All of which is interesting because "Fargo," while an amusing and beautifully shot crime story with a great Burwell score, wasn't at all the best of what the Coen brothers do. In fact, it achieved critical and popular success precisely for what it what was missing.
What seems to bother critics about the Coens' movies is that their artistic love of distance prevents their heroes — H.I. from "Raising Arizona," Tom Reagan from "Miller's Crossing," The Dude from "The Big Lebowski" — from reaching off the screen. To the Coens, all the actors are under observation, and the Hollywood expectation that we should feel intimately involved with the hero of the movie is betrayed by most of their movies. In "Fargo," as in "Blood Simple," the brothers solved that problem by removing the protagonist completely.